General perception of phyicists?

xdrgnh

What do you think the publics perceptions of physicists are compared to doctors, lawyers and other scientific disciplines.

SW VandeCarr

I'm not sure law or even medicine (in terms of practice) are scientific disciplines. Medicine is becoming more science based, but for good reasons, the experimental aspect of medical research is limited. I'm not sure law would qualify as a science at all. I think comparing practice based disciplines, which have substantial contact with the general public, to physics is like comparing apples to oranges. Nearly everyone comes into contact with physicians and to lesser extent, with lawyers. Relatively few knowingly come into contact with physicists. Many of them are involved with enormous machines that smash very small things into even smaller things.

xdrgnh

excuse my poor grammar but I did not mean to imply medicine and law were a scientific field.

genericusrnme

http://i.imgur.com/EkdLo.jpg
I think that about sums it up!

WannabeNewton

I don't think retarded pre - pubescent girls on facebook count for a valid perception. These are the same group of people that think Taylor Swift, Justin Beiber, and Katy Perry can sing well and make profound music.

micromass

That gave me a headache

By the way: I changed the image into a link,since it wouldn't fit the page.

genericusrnme

Ah, sorry about that - I've got firefox in a wee window so I didn't notice

SW VandeCarr

Well, I don't think that "retarded pre-pubescent" girl will ever be President of the US, but she may well get elected to Congress some day, where I think she'll fit right in.

WannabeNewton

God bless 'murrica.

lisab

Not sure if I should or ...

Ivan Seeking

That girl should be forced to take algebra. That would teach her!

chiro

That silly girl probably doesn't realize that all the computers, mobile phones, and iPod devices she uses require quantum mechanics, let alone all the communication theory and mathematics/statistics required for communication between them to ever take place.

I couldn't imagine her fighting her way out of a paper bag if someone stole her facebook account and electronic gizmo's to log in to them.

Chronos

Resistance would be futile for any paper bag obstructing facebook access to a pp girl.

Danger

I couldn't help noticing that those morons don't realize that Hawking is English.
My crowd doesn't give any thought to anyone's occupation. A couple are drywallers, a few in other branches of construction, one is a lawyer (there was another lawyer earlier, but she's in jail now), a building manager (ie: janitor), a cab driver, some mechanics, an aerobatics instructor (until he was killed in a crash due to mechanical error a couple of years ago), a doctor, a professor of geology, a professor of pulmonary neurophysiology, a petroleum industry tech journalist, a designer for Cisco, a tech support supervisor for Telus...
The first half of those are ones that I party with every week; the second half were from my writing and/or SF clubs or pool teams from a few years back.
We all get along as equals. The only serious question that we ever ask is "who's buying the next round?" (The lawyer usually tries to weasel out of that.)

DragonPetter

I think one of the worst perceptions are that STEM people lack emotion and empathy, or that any emotions they might have are misguided or naive. They view them as not "real" people. Part of this is that they think STEM people are not artistic or don't have any aesthetic appreciation. People, for some reason, like to classify people in boxes, and if you're good at math and science, then you must not be good at art to the same degree to make up for it.

Dembadon

This is why we can't have nice things.

EricVT

Suave.
Debonair.
Sophisticated.
Exciting.

Physicists are basically rock stars.